For each serving: 1 thick slice of crusty bread, grilled
1. Soak the clams for 5 minutes in a basin or sink filled with cold water. Drain and refill the basin with fresh cold water, leaving in the clams. Vigorously scrub the clams one by one with a very stiff brush. Drain, refill the basin, and repeat the whole scrubbing operation. Do this 2 or 3 more times, always in fresh changes of water, until you see no more sand settling to the bottom of the basin. Discard any that, when handled, don’t clamp shut.
2. Choose a broad enough pot that can later accommodate all the clams in layers no more than 2 or 3 deep. Put in the olive oil and chopped shallots or onion and turn on the heat to medium. Sauté until the shallots or onion become translucent, and add the garlic. Sauté the garlic until it becomes colored a pale gold, then add the parsley. Stir once or twice, and add the wine and the chili pepper. Cook at lively heat for about 2 minutes, stirring frequently, then put all the clams in the pot.
3. Stir 2 or 3 times, trying to turn over as many of the clams as you can, then cover the pot, keeping the heat at high. Check the clams frequently, moving them around with a long-handled spoon. Some clams will open sooner than others. Using a pair of tongs or a slotted spoon, pick up the clams as they open and put them into a serving bowl.
4. When all the clams have opened and have been transferred to the serving bowl, turn off the heat and, tipping the pot to one side, ladle the juices out of the pot and over the clams. Take care not stir up the juices or to scoop them up from the bottom, where there may be sand. Bring the bowl to the table promptly together with a slice of grilled bread for each diner’s soup plate.
Note In Italy, no cook book or cook will ever advise you to discard any clams that don’t open while cooking. Clams stay clamped shut because they are alive. The most reluctant ones to loosen their hold and unclench their shells are the most vigorously alive of all. When eating them raw on the half shell, how does anyone know which ones would not have opened in the pot? The clams you should discard are those that stay open when you handle them before cooking, because they are dead.
Clam and Pea Soup
CLAMS MARRY WELL with green vegetables, and when good fresh peas are around this can be an especially sweet and lively soup. If raw peas are stale and floury, however, it may be wiser to settle for the frozen variety.
For 6 servings
3 dozen small littleneck clams live in their shells
3 pounds fresh peas, unshelled weight, OR 3 ten-ounce packages frozen peas, thawed
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup chopped onion
1½ teaspoons chopped garlic
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
⅔ cup canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, cut up, with their juice
Salt
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
Crostini, fried bread squares
1. Soak and scrub the clams. Discard any open clams that do not clamp shut at your touch.
2. Put the clams in a pot broad enough to accommodate them in layers no more than 2 or 3 deep, add ½ cup of water, cover tightly, and turn on the heat to high. Check the clams frequently, moving them around with a long-handled spoon, bringing up to the top the clams from the bottom. As soon as the first clams start to open, transfer these with tongs or a slotted spoon to a bowl. When the last clam has unclenched its shell and you have taken it out of the pot, turn off the heat, and leave the pot’s lid on.
3. Detach all the clam meat from the shells, discarding the shells. Dip each clam in the juices in the pot to rinse off any grains of sand clinging to it; dip it in and out very gently, without stirring up the pot juices.
4. Cut each clam up into 2 or 3 pieces, putting them all in a small, clean bowl.
5. Pour back into the pot any of the juices that collected in the original bowl to which you had transferred the clams in their shells.
6. Set a strainer over a bowl or pouring cup and line it with a paper towel. Filter all the juices in the pot, straining them through the paper towel.
7. Pour just enough of the filtered juices over the cut-up clam meat to keep it moist, and reserve the rest.
8. If using fresh peas: Shell them and prepare a cupful of the pods for cooking. Soak in cold water, drain, rinse, and set aside.
If using thawed frozen peas: Move on to the next step.
9. Choose a deep, large sauté pan, put in the oil, the chopped onion, and turn on the heat to medium. Cook and stir the onion until it becomes translucent, then add the chopped garlic. Stir once or twice. When the garlic becomes colored a deep gold, add the chopped parsley, stir well, then add the cut-up tomatoes with their juice. Add salt and a few grindings of pepper and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
10. Put in the shelled fresh peas and the prepared pods, or the thawed frozen peas, add the filtered clam juices and, if necessary, enough water to cover the peas by about 1 inch. Cover the pot and adjust heat to cook at a gentle, but steady simmer. If using fresh peas, it may take 10 minutes or more for them to become tender, depending on their freshness and youth. If using thawed peas, cook for just 1 or 2 minutes. Taste and correct for salt and pepper.
11. Add the cut-up clams with any remaining juices. Cook no longer than the few seconds necessary to warm them through, or they will become tough. Ladle into individual soup bowls and serve at once with crostini.
Mussel Soup
For 4 servings
2 pounds mussels live in their shells
⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil
1½ teaspoons garlic chopped fine
1 tablespoon parsley chopped coarse
1 cup canned imported Italian plum tomatoes, drained and cut up
⅛ teaspoon chopped hot red chili pepper
For each serving: 1 thick slice of grilled or browned in the oven crusty bread, lightly rubbed with a peeled mashed garlic clove
1. Wash and clean the mussels. Discard any that do not clamp shut at the touch.
2. Choose a pot that can comfortably accommodate all the mussels in their shells. Put in the oil and chopped garlic, and turn on the heat to medium. Sauté the garlic until it has become colored a light gold. Add the parsley, stir thoroughly once, then put in the cut-up tomatoes and the chili pepper. Cook, uncovered, at a gentle, but steady simmer for about 25 minutes, or until the oil floats free of the tomatoes.
3. Put in all the mussels in their shells, cover the pot, and raise the heat to high. Check the mussels frequently, moving them around with a long-handled spoon and bringing up to the top the mussels from the bottom. Cook until all the mussels have opened their shells.
4. Put a slice of the grilled, garlicky bread on the bottom of each individual soup bowl, ladle the mussels with their sauce and juices over it, and serve at once.
Squid and Artichoke Soup
IN THE ITALIAN RIVIERA, whether one is cooking meat or seafood, the principal concern is marrying it to the right vegetable. An example is this soup of squid and artichokes, a match as fresh as it is beautiful, mingling pearly white rings and moss-green slivers, gifts of the deep and of the sun.
For 4 servings
1 pound fresh OR frozen whole squid, thawed, preferably with sacs under 5 inches long
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon garlic chopped very fine
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
1 cup dry white wine
1 large or 2 medium artichokes
The juice of ½ lemon
Salt
For each serving: 1 thick slice of grilled or browned in the oven crusty bread, rubbed lightly with a peeled mashed garlic clove
1. Clean the squid. Cut the sacs into narrow rings, ¼ inch broad or less. Separate the larger tentacle clusters in two, and cut in half all tentacles that are longer than 1 inch.
2. Put the oil and garlic into a soup pot and turn the heat on to medium. Cook, stirring from time to time, until the garlic becomes lightly co
lored. Add the parsley, stir once or twice, add the squid, stir to coat well, add liberal grindings of pepper and the wine, and turn all ingredients over once or twice. If the liquid is not sufficient to cover the squid by at least 1½ inches, add as much water as necessary. When the liquid begins to simmer, cover the pot and turn down the heat to medium low.
3. Cook for 40 minutes or more until the squid rings feel tender when prodded with a fork. Whenever the level of liquid falls below 1½ inches above the squid, add more water.
4. While the squid cooks, clean the artichoke. Cut it lengthwise into the very thinnest possible slices, leaving on part of the stem wherever possible. Put the sliced artichoke in a bowl with enough cold water to cover and the juice of ½ lemon.
5. When the squid is tender, add salt and stir well. Drain the artichoke slices, rinse them in cold water, and add them to the pot. Add enough water to cover the ingredients by 2 inches. Add a little more salt, stir thoroughly, and cover the pot again. Cook until the artichoke is tender, about 15 minutes, more or less, depending on the artichoke. Taste and correct for salt and pepper.
6. Put a slice of the garlicky bread in each individual soup bowl, pour soup over it, and serve at once.
PASTA
The Essentials of Cooking Pasta
The pot Use a lightweight pot, such as enameled aluminum, that will transmit heat quickly and be easy to handle when full of pasta and boiling water.
The colander An ample colander with feet attached should be waiting, resting securely in the kitchen sink or a large basin.
Water Pasta needs lots of water to move around in, or it becomes gummy. Four quarts of water are required for a pound of pasta. Never use less than 3 quarts, even for a small amount of pasta. Add another quart for each half pound, but do not cook more than 2 pounds in the same pot. Large quantities of pasta are difficult to cook properly, and pots with that much water are heavy and dangerous to handle.
Salt For every pound of pasta, put in no less than 1½ tablespoons of salt, more if the sauce is very mild and undersalted. Add the salt when the water comes to a boil. Wait until the water returns to a full, rolling boil before putting in the pasta.
Olive oil Never put oil in the water except when cooking stuffed homemade pasta. In the latter case, a tablespoon of oil in the pot reduces the friction and keeps the stuffed pasta from splitting.
Calculating servings One pound of factory-made, boxed dry pasta should produce 4 to 6 servings, depending on what follows the pasta. For approximate servings of fresh pasta, see the section on homemade pasta.
Putting the pasta in the pot The pasta goes in after the boiling water has been salted and has returned to a full boil. Put all the pasta in at one time and cover the pot briefly to hasten the water’s return to a boil. Watch it to avoid it boiling over and extinguishing the gas flame. When the water has once again returned to a boil, cook either uncovered or with a lid on largely askew. Using a long wooden spoon, stir the pasta the moment it goes into the water, and frequently thereafter while it is cooking.
• If you are cooking long dried pasta such as spaghetti or perciatelli, when you drop it in the pot, use a long wooden spoon to bend the strands and submerge them completely. Do not break up spaghetti or any other long pasta into smaller pieces.
• If you are using homemade pasta, gather all of it in a dish towel, tightly hold one end of the towel high above the boiling water, loosen the bottom end, and let the pasta slide into the pot.
Al dente Pasta must be cooked until it is firm to the bite, al dente. The firmness of spaghetti and other dried factory pasta is different from that of fettuccine and other homemade pasta. The latter can never be as firm and chewy as the former, but that does not mean one should allow it to become yieldingly soft: It should always offer some resistance to the bite. When it does not, pasta becomes leaden, it loses buoyancy and its ability to deliver briskly the flavors of its sauce.
Draining The instant pasta is done, and not a second later, you must drain it, pouring it out of the pot and into the colander. Give the colander a few vigorous sideways and up-and-down shakes to drain all the water away.
Saucing and tossing Have the sauce ready when the pasta is done. Do not let drained pasta sit in the colander waiting for the sauce to be finished or reheated. Transfer cooked, drained pasta without a moment’s delay to a warm serving bowl. The instant it’s in the bowl, start tossing it with the sauce. If grated cheese is called for, add some of it immediately, and toss the pasta with it. The heat will melt the cheese, which can then fuse creamily with the sauce.
In the sequence of steps that lead to producing a dish of pasta and getting it to the table, none is more important than tossing. Up to the time you toss, pasta and sauce are two separate entities. Tossing bridges the separation and makes them one. The oil or butter must coat every strand thoroughly and evenly, reach into every crevice, and with it carry the flavors of the components of the sauce. However marvelous a sauce may be, it cannot merely sit on top of or at the bottom of the bowl. If it is not broadly and uniformly distributed, the pasta for which it is intended will have little flavor.
When you add the sauce, toss rapidly, using a fork and spoon or two forks, bringing the pasta up from the bottom of the bowl, separating it, lifting it, dropping it, turning it over, swirling it around and around. If the sauce clings thickly together, separate it with the fork and spoon so that it can be spread evenly.
When the sauce is butter-based, add a dollop of fresh butter and give the pasta one or two last tosses. If the sauce has an olive oil base, follow the same procedure, using fresh olive oil instead of butter.
Note Fresh pasta is more absorbent than factory-made pasta, and more butter or oil is usually required.
Serving Once the pasta is sauced, serve it promptly, inviting your guests and family to put off talking and start eating. The point to remember is that from the moment the pasta is done, there should be no pauses in the sequence of draining, saucing, serving, and eating. Cooked, hot pasta must not be allowed to sit, or it will turn into a clammy, gluey mass.
Factory-Made Pasta
THE BOXED, dry pasta one refers to as factory-made includes such familiar shapes as spaghetti, penne, and fusilli. These cannot be made as successfully at home as they are in commercial pasta plants with industrial equipment. Dry pasta from factories is not necessarily less fine than the fresh pasta one can make at home. On the contrary, for many dishes, factory-made pasta is the better choice, although for some others, one may want the particular attributes of homemade pasta. The differences between the two categories of pasta and their general applications are discussed in the 'Pasta' section of the introduction.
How to Make Fresh Pasta at Home
The Machine Method and the Rolling-Pin Method
UNLESS you happen to live in Emilia-Romagna, in whose towns and cities there are still a few shops selling pasta made by hand, you can make far better fresh pasta, either by the rolling-pin method or the machine method, than you can buy or eat anywhere.
It needs to be said, however, that the two methods are not merely separate ways of reaching the same objective. Pasta rolled by hand is quite unlike the fresh pasta made with a machine. In hand-rolled pasta, the dough is thinned by stretching it, with a rapid succession of hand motions, over the length of a yard-long wooden dowel. In the machine method, the dough is squeezed between two cylinders until it reaches the desired thinness.
The color of hand-stretched pasta is demonstrably deeper than that thinned by machine; its surface is etched by a barely visible pattern of intersecting ridges and hollows; when cooked, the pasta sucks in sauce and exudes moistness. On the palate it has a gossamer, soft touch that no other pasta can duplicate. But learning the rolling-pin method is, unfortunately, not just a question of following instructions but rather of learning a craft. The instructions must be executed again and again with great patience, and mastered by a pair of nimble, willing hands until the motions are performed through intuition rather than d
eliberation.
The machine, on the other hand, requires virtually no skill to use. Once you have learned to combine eggs and flour into a dough that is neither too moist nor too dry, all you do is follow a series of extraordinarily simple, mechanical steps and you can produce fine fresh pasta inexpensively, at home, at the very first attempt.
The flour In Italy, the classic fresh egg pasta produced in the Bolognese style is made with a flour known as 00, doppio zero. It is a talcum-soft white flour, less strong in gluten than American all-purpose flour of either the bleached or unbleached variety. When, outside of Italy, I make fresh pasta at home, I have found that unbleached all-purpose flour does the most consistently satisfying job: It is easy to work with; the pasta it produces is plump and has marvelous texture and fragrance.
Confusion exists over the merits of semolina, which is milled from durum, the strongest of wheats. In Italian it is called semola di grano duro, and you will find it listed on all Italian packages of factory-made pasta. It is the only suitable flour for industrially produced pasta, but I do not prefer it for home use. To begin with, its consistency is often grainy, even when it is sold as pasta flour, and grainy semolina is frustrating to work with. Even when it is milled to the fine, silky texture you need, you must use a machine to roll it out; to try to do it with a rolling pin is to face a nearly hopeless struggle. My advice is to leave semolina flour to factories and to commercial pasta makers: At home use unbleached all-purpose flour.
PASTA BY THE MACHINE METHOD
The machine The only kind of pasta machine you should consider is the kind that has one set of parallel cylinders, usually made of steel, for kneading and thinning the dough, and a double set of cutters, one broad for fettuccine, the other for tagliolini, very narrow noodles. Virtually all these machines are hand-cranked, but electric ones are made, and there is also a separate motor one can buy that connects easily to the machine’s shaft to replace the crank.
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking Page 15
